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"Stuff that works"

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12:51 / 20.10.02

saveloy> Battered, loveable technology is absolutely used to justify the underdogs. And it emphasises their ability to work with what's around them - e.g. the A-Team building a tank out of a toaster each week. They're in tune with their surroundings rather than at war with them - like the bad guys seem to be.

But not all sci-fi heroes are underdogs. Take Star Trek for instance (please take it, uggghhhhhh). Their technology is shiny and brand spanking new. But then, they are representatives of an ordered, rationalist utopia. So you'd expect it to be.

13:39 / 20.10.02

Actually, it was Star Trek that started me thinking about adaptability vs. overspecialization in technology.
There are two tropes in Star Trek (at least in the old show) that constantly recur: Kirk's love for the ship overwhelming all other human relations (making him unseduceable), and Scotty doing things to the engine that they're not designed for. "She canna take it any more, captain!"
It's the ship, after all, that's been the consistent character through most of the incarnations of the series. (Except for Voyager - named for the ship - and Deep Space 9 - named for the distinctly non-gleaming station, made with alien technology and constantly duct-taped into service.)

In a way, that axis between overspecialization and adaptability might be responsible for the real nightmarish quality of the Alien movies... because the human tools can't shift quick enough to resist the very adaptable-techno creatures. In the first movie, [SPOILER] it's the android and the ship's computer that sells the human crew out in part, as Ian Holm's disembodied head says, because the alien is the "pinnacle of evolution" and "a perfectly adapted killing machine" or something similar. The machine made flesh, or flesh made machine.
Spooky.

11:25 / 21.10.02

The "fairly obvious link" between technology and Fascism (sorry to have started this, it's always me, isn't it?) is the similarity between automated factory production and the specific workings of the death camps. I'm trying to be very minimal in my claims here, since I'm not an expert on the subject, though I'm planning to read Heidegger's essay (who, IIRC, believes that the human hand is technology, by the way) in the very near future, which is why I'm using the vague term "link" rather than trying to argue that technology was/is either an enabling or a causative factor in Fascism. I think it's difficult to think about the links between social values, efficiency, and technology without the (European, mid-C20) fascist program of automatated "social engineering" in the name of the increased health/efficient functioning of the "social body" being at least implicated, though. (I also don't see anyone on this thread saying that that relationship is a simple equation, or an inevitable cause-and-effect.)

Just clarifying. Lots more to think about here, of course, especially Lurid's point about the real-world constraints of tech - have you read any Paul Virilio, Lurid?

13:39 / 21.10.02

To get back to some of the earlier points being made on this thread (you'll have to excuse my lack of theoretical nous, I go green whenever I think of theory, too much of it at college).

Surely a central issue that you are/were getting at here re.technology is the why it's made, and the limitations "built in" due to capital ie. as Lurid stated right at the beginning of this thread, to overcome bad design requires foresight and investment, with no guarantee of profit being generated thereby. The idea of an exploring adaptable tech (ie the hand) is a fascinating one but most tech is designed to be task specific to maximise returns. I may be completely wrong here, g'wan and point it out.

Where do computers fit into all this? Designed as a platform for multiple uses and adaptions, huge variety of applications, frequently "human-sized" and given perverse new uses - Have I got the wrong stick as well?

14:05 / 22.10.02

If you’re interested in “soft technology” or “adaptable tech,” you might enjoy this odd engineering challenge: Flugtag. If you go to “Pilot’s Pages” and look up “I am the Eggman,” you’ll see a friend of mine’s project.

14:06 / 22.10.02

Oh, and just to be on topic, I think part of the reason why personal computers are so ubiquitous is that they're friendly, adaptable (and thus, often malfunctioning) machines.

15:25 / 22.10.02

The "fairly obvious link" between technology and Fascism...is the similarity between automated factory production and the specific workings of the death camps - Deva

Do you really think that the significance of this is that technology is in some sense culpable, if that makes sense, for death camps? I'm probably stating the obvious here, but one might argue that the language of hate is central to fascism. Hence, there is an obvious link between language and fascism.

I think that makes an interesting, and enlightening comparison. Because in one sense it is true. In another sense, it is completely wrong. Language might be used as a tool of oppression, but it isn't an oppressive tool. Linking language with fascism might draw its justification from the former, but becomes invalid if it implies the latter. I'd say similar things about technology.

I think your points about social engineering, efficiency, technology and fascism are good ones, Deva. But saying that these are "linked" is rather loose and does imply a relationship which borders on cause and effect. For instance, there is a long and ugly tradition of thinking of women as inferior, weak and unintelligent. But to say that women are "linked" with inferiority, etc provides a somewhat different take on it. It implies an acceptance of (the part of) the ideology that does the linking, rather than pointing to the fact that the link has at some time been made.

Haven't read Paul Virilio, BTW.

grant. Not sure about the whole adaptability thing. I can see that it causes malfunction because of a more complex set of tasks. But compare, say, Linux and Windows and you'll see that the reason so many computers malfunction is because they are designed badly. Not because they can do lots of things.

02:20 / 23.10.02

Designed badly for what?
Interacting with human users?

04:13 / 23.10.02

The "fairly obvious link" between technology and Fascism...is the similarity between automated factory production and the specific workings of the death camps...

Deva - It seems to me that you're freely exchanging the more general construct of "organization" with the more specific construct of "technology." The success of the concetration camps in WWII was not a function of mechanical innovation, but rather bureaucracy and human resource management. While time-saving devices such as trains, poison gas, and computational devices facilitated the process, the Final Solution was a round-up and a massacre, as has been occurring for hundreds of years. Riding a train to a gas chamber differs from lining up before a headsman's stump only in speed and difference.

In terms of actually dealing with troublesome folk and generating labor, the Nazis would be sussed out of the top spot by the Inca, who had a habit of killing all the males of troublesome ethnic groups, then distributing their wives out to be impregnated by their loyal soldiers...

08:03 / 23.10.02

Repeating the points of Lurid and Monkey to some extent but here goes.

Deva> I think it's difficult to think about the links between social values, efficiency, and technology without the (European, mid-C20) fascist program of automatated "social engineering" in the name of the increased health/efficient functioning of the "social body" being at least implicated, though.

But that implies that the fascist governments were unique in their technological focus. And they weren't. The Allied powers had equally developed technological programmes (e.g. radar, the atom bomb). And 'efficiency' experts (such as Taylor and his Scientific Management) originated in the UK and US. And if we're talking here about technological narratives as ideology, then I also think more thought is required. The nazis drew on mysticism, pagan religion and ethnic rivalries as much eugenics to fashion their vision of the future. Does that make mysticism fascist? Should we talk about the 'nazism' of philosphers like Nietzsche (who whilst no anti-semite was appropriated by the nazi party).

I am not disputing that the nazis used technology to achieve their ends. I just think its contribution to nazi ideology was largely secondary.

And in fact Nazi science and technology suffered because of their rascist ideology - many of the A-bomb scientists were refugees from Europe.

08:08 / 23.10.02

Oh, and just to be on topic, I think part of the reason why personal computers are so ubiquitous is that they're friendly, adaptable (and thus, often malfunctioning) machines.

grant> I disagree. Firstly, they're useful - they didn't take off until the development of spreadsheet software. Secondly, they're personal - like cars. They allow us relative independence.

Well, OK, they are adaptable - which is part of the usefulness thing. But other, non-adaptable things like toasters and binoculars are also ubiquitous. And the 'thus' part of your quote is not true. One of the reasons they are perceived as unfriendly is that they screw up so regularly. If I worked with some one that tried to destroy my work every day, we wouldn't stay friends for long.

13:48 / 23.10.02

Should we take the Nazi stuff to another thread? It's getting a bit cluttery here and I feel responsible for threadrot, but I am interested in pursuing it.

14:16 / 23.10.02

Good idea. What do you reckon, subject wise: "technology and fascism", or "perfection and fascism"? I ask, cos I was thinking of starting a thread about perfection in general.

15:20 / 23.10.02

Unless anyone objects why not keep it here, Deva? A discussion needs to move on, or it stagnates. Perhaps there would be greater clarity in starting a new thread?

15:31 / 23.10.02

That toaster comparison is a really interesting one, actually.
I *think* toasters are less threatening because they're small and they do something obvious (heating a wire is easier to understand than, well, the mysterious ways in which computers "think"), but I'm not sure of that.

The "thus" in my post had to with malfunctioning as a product of adaptability, not ubiquity or friendliness. As in, the more things you make a device do, the more it gets out-of-whack.

Although I will say that friendliness might lead to malfunctioning - the "friendliest" car I owned had a lot of duct tape and baling wire holding parts together. It was "personalized" - no one else could drive it as well as I could - but it was also more approachable from a repair perspective - I never felt (too) cowed by its inner workings. So I set it on fire once or twice....

Maybe "friendly" is the wrong word.

07:25 / 24.10.02

Ooh! Ooh! I think there's a genuine "Two Cultures" moment here.

But saying that these are "linked" is rather loose and does imply a relationship which borders on cause and effect.

said Lurid, going on to cite the example of women/inferiority. Now, I think the statement "women are linked to inferiority" is so self-evidently true as to almost be redundant, and not offensive or implying a causal, inherent or prediscursive/natural link at all. But when I thought about it I came up with lots of phrases like "this gene has been linked to Alzheimers" or "smoking has been linked to lung cancer", which does imply a causal, inherent and/or prediscursive/natural link. Maybe I should say "discursively linked" instead?

Which sort of gets back towards what I think is the heart of the discussion, the relationship(s) between "technology" in its most abstracted meaning as the interface between humans and the world (this is why, IIRC, Heidegger counted the human hand as technology - not in its "natural" state but in the trained/consciously controlled state in which we experience it post-infancy), actual historical discursive or ideological formations around technology (its alleged perfectibility being - discursively - linked to a variety of ideas: ideas about social efficiency, ideas about a utopian future freed from necessity and labour), and then, within that, the particular concrete circumstances in which specific pieces of technology are developed and used.

I guess the thing is that when "all we want is stuff that works" we can't just have stuff that works, disembedded from its discursive context and history.

More on Nazis later.

10:51 / 24.10.02

Deva. The whole thread has been about the Two Cultures, or at least I have derailed Nick's original idea and made it so. I'm not sure whether you agree with me or not about "linking". I think PepsiMax and The Monkey make good points about the limits of the discourse. The point being that I am not trying to deny the role role of context and history - which is what sciency types usually get accused of. Rather, I think that this particular linking is "out of context".

To the untrained eye, it looks as if one constructs a technology that is linked to Fascism and then looks for a discourse that supports that construction. The specific role of technology in such histories and the histories of different fascisms (not to mention the different effects of technology) makes such an analysis look one sided.

13:49 / 24.10.02

I know, Lurid - I'm not accusing you of doing so, I'm just trying to clarify my own thought.

The trouble with the Two Cultures is that humanities types are constantly accused of accusing science types of ignoring discursive context...

16:27 / 26.10.02

The trouble with the Two Cultures is that humanities types are constantly accused of accusing science types of ignoring discursive context...

Its a fair cop, guv.

On a related, threadrotty note, is it just me who feels the Two Cultures thing on Barbelith?

10:58 / 27.10.02

May I suggest setting up separate threads for Two Cultures (I believe there is already one floating around here but I can't find it) and Technology and Fascism - as these are both aside from Nick's original point.

grant> I think it's more the 'personalized' aspect than the failure part that makes them attractive. There's nothing 'friendly' about a sinking oil tanker, for example. And whether your technology fails or not depends on how good you are at personalizing it.

Is it worth bringing up the MS vs. Linux debate here? Linux is perceived as more 'personal' and therefore more trustworthy than MS?

15:31 / 27.10.02

I think the only way you could say twentieth-century death camps and technology are linked is because they are both products of industrialised economies.

For me, Adams' "technology" refers to the kind of tools we get when we use industry to make them for us. Yes, computers are useful and versatile and to some extent personal, but a great deal of their overall appeal is that they deskill employees and enforce conformity. They cannot function perfectly all the time because their reason for being is largely economic, not artistic. And they come with the other political baggage that industry carries with it -- WWII was after all, like most wars, about competing economies.

"Stuff that works" by contrast would be something that is not produced by industry, and politically neutral. But I'm damned if I can imagine anything like this more complicated than a stick.

00:40 / 28.10.02

Ig> Interesting points. But I think no technology is 'politically neutral'. A technology is something that extends the possibilities of human action - and all human actions have some kind of political context (even, say, picking your nose). And a stick can be used to know a piece of fruit off a tree or to hit another person with.

I think it's technology with a specific kind of politics that's of interest here. Anti-authoritarian, maybe? Libertarian? Holding out some promise of privacy or personal identification?

I dunno.

14:34 / 28.10.02

I think you're right, Pepsi. But the upshot of that is that promising technology is precluded.

E.g. MS/Linux thing:

MS -- Homogenous and difficult to customise, planned obsolescence, written for profit, works OK.
Linux -- Heterogenous, easier (I've heard) to customise, open source, written for love, works better (I've heard).

Linux looks good. But how many people can install the free source? Distributors are charging for their installation CDs etc., which means sooner or later, accountants will influence the OS's development and implementation. And that's not considering the origins of Linux. Sure, Unix was born and bred largely in academia, but where did the computer science funding come from? Plus the input of Sun and anyone else who sold Unix systems back in the day.

Sorry to be such a cynic, but I think the goal of Linux distributors is the same as the goal of MS. They're just going about it in different ways. For every Britney CD Bill Gates releases, the Linux industry releases twenty indie band CDs. Britney fans identify themselves as different from indie freaks and vice versa. But they're both still buying product, and The Man is still making money.

16:13 / 28.10.02

I think that politicising nose-picking definitely extends the bounds of my understanding of politics. But I think I know what you mean, Pepsi.

Now I'm not absolutely sure about this, but I think that asking for "anti-authoritarian" (or whatever political colour) technology is wrong headed. I think that technology will take on the shape of the political context that creates it.

As an example one might take cars. One could claim that cars represent a particular brand of individualism. More. Cars give expression to and make possible a certain lifestyle. But the technology of the car is equally the technology of the bus. Now some technology, say military, is of a single purpose. But doesn't considering the "Star Wars" project strongly suggest that politics (and Sci-fi) sets the agenda?

Perhaps this is the point. The question is then about what happens to technology if you adopt a certain stance. I think this is bound to be a difficult, if not impossible, question to answer. A technology that takes into account anti-authortarian, libertarian and progressive concerns would please many of us. I might even be able to suggest existing technology, or at a stretch "almost existing" technology, that could serve these ends. But predicting what might emerge from a certain climate is tricky.

At best, one might want to inform the practice of producing technology with certain values. To have weight, a call for this sort of change requires serious engagement with engineering - the nuts and bolts of technology. Unless the change is to be regressive, of course.

IJ: I think you have misunderstood the difference between Linux and MS. Being open-source makes a huge difference, in a way that perhaps undermines my last paragraph. Hmmm....

17:25 / 28.10.02

I think you have misunderstood the difference between Linux and MS. Being open-source makes a huge difference ...

Maybe, but to the average punter like me who just ends up paying for a distro instead of a EULA, how? I can't see myself writing Linux applications. I'll agree it would be nice to have a wider range of third-party apps to use, but I can't see them all being freeware. And how radical and diverse can they be without losing the ability to talk to each other?

22:21 / 28.10.02

Linux is more stable, more efficient and cheaper than Windows. You pay the price for documentation, of course, but it is also possible to get an installation for free - though probably not best for most users. Once you have Linux, it upgrades the whole time and you can follow it for relatively little - you pay for the cost of the download. As I understand it, the code is often developed for free by people wanting to support the project.

Any Linux experts want to flesh this out/correct my misconceptions?

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